Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Coincidence

If you recall the Victorian Bushfire post I wrote back in February, midway through the article I went on a mild tangent about Dowling and myself looking after a Koala that had been hit by a car (this happened about six years ago). I wrote to Dowling after finishing the “Burnt” article in February, regarding a name for the creature:

FROM: BeefTO: Dowling

Remeber that Koala we found that had been hit by the car?

We never named it.

What should we call him?

FROM: DowlingTO: Beef

Wayne Carbashameface

It seems a little extravagant for an animal’s name (I was thinking more along the lines of “Coco” or “Felix”), but fuck it, it’s as good as name as any.

The reason I am brining all of this up, is that a few weeks ago Dowling and I were driving around the foothills at about 2am, when we came to the realization that this was the same road and the same time of night when we found the injured Koala around the corner. In one of life’s creepier moments, we turned the corner to find a Koala sitting in the exact same fucking spot we had found Wayne.

This Koala wasn’t injured though, it was just sitting in the middle of the road looking bored. It didn’t seem scared of us, or bothered at all for that matter - even when we started to shove it to get it off the road. Eventually it crawled onto the footpath, and ran off into the darkness. Though ran is probably the wrong verb here. Koalas are slow and goofy looking as fuck when they move, if you can imagine a fat toad that had its ankles hobbled by Kathy Bates, then you are not far off. We watched him hobble off for about five minutes (in which he had made about three metres progress, no wonder these poor bastards rarely survive bush fires), before getting bored and deciding to leave.

To our shock the Koala had just been a diversion, and a herd of Emus carjacked us.

No, just kidding about the Emus – but all of that shit about the Koala was true. I wonder if it had been the same one, the infamous Wayne Carbashameface. A Koala’s lifespan is somewhere between 13-18 years, so who knows, it could have been. We don’t get too many Koalas in the suburbs.

Here is a sketch I did for your convenience of the Koala sitting on the road, as I know there are still a few of you who think a “Koala” is “some kind of flying lizard”: